[An English author whose works often concern the city of London, Adcock served as editor of the London Bookman from 1923 until his death in 1930. In the following excerpt, he presents an appreciative survey of Ward's career to 1903.]

To think over the successful problem or purposeful novels of the last fifteen years is to indulge in what is very much of a meditation among the tombs. Books of their week, of their season, of their year, selling in tens of thousands, read and discussed by everyone, extravagantly praised and extravagantly condemned, so long as they lived they were intensely and aggressively alive; but "whom the gods love die early," and they are, most of them, already little more than half-forgotten names. They ran through their popularity as swiftly and as splendidly as a spendthrift runs through his inheritance, and died bankrupt and neglected after a career that was as...